Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Lizzie McGuire characters.
Previously:
Lizzie's heart began to hammer and her fingers tightened around Gordo's.
Dr. Sanchez: "The official name for what you have is Hodgkin's Lymphoma."
Lizzie heard Gordo's mom gasp and saw her shake her head.
Lizzie: "What's that?" she asked, not one bit embarrassed by her ignorance.
Dr. Sanchez: "It's a form of cancer that develops in the lymph system, which is part of the body's circulatory system. Right now, you're in an early stage and your prognosis is good."
Cancer! Lizzie felt as if someone had hit her hard in the stomach and knocked the wind out of her. The worst had happened.
Chapter 4-Treatment & Christmas
Lizzie thought she hadn't heard Dr. Sanchez correctly.
Lizzie: "But Gordo's so healthy. He plays football." she blurted.
Dr. Sanchez: "Hodgkin's is rare. It accounts for less than one percent of all cancer cases. Unfortunately, when we see it, it's in young people between the ages of fifteen and thirty five sometimes even much younger. Basically, as in all cancers, the cells of the lymph system go crazy and start dividing at will. This breaks down the immune system-your body's infection fighting machine-and it can spread to other organs."
Gordo's face looked impassive, as if he were listening to a weather report. Lizzie wanted to scream, No! No! You've made a mistake!
Roberta: "He never complained of any pain."
Dr. Sanchez: "Hi symptoms were classic-swollen, painless nodes in his neck, night sweats, fevers, weight loss. But those symptoms could be ascribed to any number of illnesses. That's why we ran so many tests."
Dr. Sanchez removed several papers from the file folder.
Dr. Sanchez: "Your pathology report shows that the cells in your neck were positive for cancer. But on the good side, your CT scan showed that your lymph network looks clean. And your bone marrow biopsy was negative also. In other words, the cancer hasn't spread yet."
Gordo: "Yet?" he said speaking for the first time.
Dr. Sanchez: "Untreated, it will spread."
Gordo: "How do you treat it?"
Dr. Sanchez: "We start with chemotherapy."
Lizzie felt sick to her stomach. She'd heard about chemotherapy and its side effects.
Dr. Sanchez: "I'm moving you up to the oncology floor and assigning you another doctor. Paul Kessler is one of your top oncologists-a big football fan, too. He played for Duke University as an undergraduate. You'll like him."
Gordo: "So I won't be home for Christmas? You told me I'd be home for Christmas."
Dr. Sanchez: "You might be. Chemo patients are given their initial doses in the hospital to see how they tolerate the drugs and to work out the best combination. We'll insert a Port-A-Cath here."
He touched an area near Gordo's collarbone.
Dr. Sanchez: "It's a tube gizmo surgically implanted under the skin so that your chemo can be administered without having to stick you all the time. The catheter's opening will be on the outside. Medications will be inserted every three weeks for six cycles, for a total of eighteen weeks. At that rate, you'll be through chemo by April."
Gordo: "I've got to walk around with a stupid tube hanging half out of me? I've got to take all these weird chemicals? What about school? What about my life!" he said as his voice rose.
Dr. Sanchez: "Dr. Kessler will answer all your questions. Chemo is his specialty. But you'll be able to return to school once you are on the program. And after you adjust, you'll resume regular life. The chemo treatments will eventually be over, David."
Gordo's face had become an angry mask and his hand in Lizzie's felt icy cold.
Gordo: "And then what Doc? Will the cancer be gone forever? Will I get to pick up where I left off? Or is this thing going to hang over me for the rest of my life?"
Dr. Sanchez: "I can't answer that David. I don't know."
Gordo: "Well maybe I don't want to go through chemo and all. Maybe I just want to pack up and go home and forget the whole mess."
Roberta: "Gordo, you can't…"
The doctor interjected.
Dr. Sanchez: "You have the right to refuse treatment, David, but it wouldn't be wise. With it, you at least have hope for recovery. Without it, you will most certainly die."
THE NEXT DAY:
Nothing had prepared Lizzie for Gordo's diagnosis. She moved through the next day ina numbing fog of disbelief. She sobbed into the phone when she told her father and felt and odd kind of comfort in his display of explosive anger. Her mother was sympathetic, and sorry, she wanted Lizzie to come home-Christmas was only a week away. Lizzie refused, she couldn't leave Gordo.
He was started on chemo, and the side effects were immediate. He began vomiting continually.
Dr. Kessler: "It takes some adjustment to arrive at the right combination. The important thing is, David has to keep eating."
His advice seemed stupid, since Gordo couldn't keep anything down. Gordo begged Lizzie to go home.
Gordo: "I don't want you to see me like this." he moaned. His skin looked ashen.
Lizzie: "I'm not leaving." she insisted.
Yet, the weekend before Christmas, she decided to return home long enough to replenish her wardrobe-and to appease her mother. As she walked into her house, she felt like a stranger. The decorations were up. It was the first time in all of her seventeen years that she hadn't helped with the festivities. She went quickly to her room and felt like a stranger there too. Everything was familiar, yet alien. She'd grown to the hospital smells and sparse furnishings.
Lizzie tightened the rein on her emotions as she dumped the contents of her clothing on her bed and started toward her closet for fresh clothes. Midway, she stopped. Draped on a hanger form atop the molding of the closet door, exactly where she'd left it, was the black taffeta strapless dress she was to have worn to the school holiday dance. It reminded her of a simpler time, a throwback to days of unhurried sweetness when nothing was more pressing in her life than studying for a test. Or talking on the phone with Miranda. Or making plans for a date with Gordo. She felt a catch in her throat. Slowly she approached the dress and fingered the satiny material. How foreign it felt. Her hand were used to touching hospital sheets, hospital pajamas, and cotton blankets. The dress's elegant fabric no longer belonged in her world. She wondered if there would ever be room for such an extravagance again.
Tears slid down her cheeks, wetting her skin. She felt her shoulders begin to shake as sobs, unchecked pured out of her. Gordo, Gordo…….What's going to happen to us? She couldn't stop crying. Couldn't stop aching inside. Lizzie buried her face in the dark fabric and felt dampness soak into the material. She could almost hear her mother saying, "Be careful. Water will stain taffeta. It's not a very practical dress, you know." But Lizzie only wept harder, not caring. Somehow the tear stains seemed appropriate. The dress would wear watermarks forever, a symbol of the lost innocence of her life. Of the cruel and bitter upheaval in Gordo's. Quickly with muffled weeping, she began to pack some stuff to take with her to the hospital.
On Christmas Day, Gordo's hair had began to fall out.
Gordo: "Ho, ho, ho." he said without mirth, holding up the wad of hair left on his pillow.
Lizzie: "It's only hair." she said but inwardly she was shaken.
Lizzie's family had visited Gordo at the hospital so they were having their Christmas their in Gordo's room. Sam and Jo had bought Gordon a football signed by the players on the Raiders team. Lizzie had given him a baseball hat, a sweater, and a glamorous color photograph of herself. He sat holding it, staring down at her smiling face.
Gordo: "You look beautiful Lizzie."
Lizzie: "You told me once that you wanted a good picture of me, so I had it made for you. It's nothing special."
Gordo: "It is to me."
He looked into her eyes, and in spite of his gaunt face, his thinning hair, and his sallow complexion, she still considered him handsome.
Gordo: "I bought you this last October. I've been paying it off a little at a time. Mom got it out for me last week." he said as he handed her a small, wrapped box.
Inside the box was a gold bracelet, the chain thin and delicate, with tiny pearls set like staggered snowdrops along its length. She thought it was the most wonderful gift she'd ever received from him and told him so by kissing him in front of her parents and his mom.
Gordo: "I got you this too." he said, and produced a rose, which gave her another opportunity to kiss him.
That night Lizzie's parents had gone home and Lizzie once again wanted to stay with Gordo and his mom. Gordo was asleep. Roberta turned to Lizzie and smiled at her.
Roberta: "Right now, you're the only thing holding my son together. This chemo business has knocked him for a loop. Kids-especially boys-think they're invincible. Why, I can count on one hand the number of days Gordo's been sick in his life. When he gets sick, he doesn't mess around with the small stuff, does he?"
Tears filled Roberta's eyes and Lizzie thought she might break down.
Lizzie: "This chemo treatment won't last forever." she said hastily.
Roberta sniffled hard.
Lizzie: "But it is a crummy way to spend Christmas."
Roberta: "A crummy way." she echoed.
They gave each other a good night hug and got comfortable in their chairs. Lizzie couldn't sleep, she longed to be a kid again. To be snuggled in her own bed, in her own room, with nothing to think about but playing with her new toys. But she wasn't a little girl anymore, she was away from home on Christmas. But she was with Gordo, the only boy she'd ever loved, who was receiving chemo for a rare and deadly form of cancer. She fingered the bracelet on her wrist and stuffed her fist into her mouth, so that Roberta or Gordo wouldn't hear her cry herself to sleep.
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